Wrap-sody in Green

Picture the perfect holiday package: crisp, green wrapping paper decked with shiny ribbons and taped well enough to keep prying fingers at bay. Sounds pretty nice, right? Now picture the day after your holiday party: mountains of tissue, envelopes, cards and wrapping paper stuffed into trash bags by the curb.

Holiday wrap and greeting cards consume a large amount of virgin resources, but with a little foresight and careful planning you can personalize your packages with less of an environmental impact. This season, use creativity, tree-free alternatives and community spirit to give forests a break.

When shopping for cards and packaging, look for 100 percent post-consumer waste (PCW) content whenever possible, a good means of keeping discarded materials out of the solid-waste stream. Also choose processed chlorine-free (PCF) paper products, in which no additional chlorine or chlorine derivatives were used to bleach the final recycled-fiber product.

Cards
Love sending cards with family photos? Print your own! Red River Paper's 100 percent post-consumer content, PCF greeting cards feature photo-grade paper on the front, the recycled arrow logo on the back, and writing paper in the middle. "The cards have an inkjet-receptive coating on them," says Dick Clampitt, president of Red River Paper. "It will give you a good-quality, subtle matte print card with rich tones" ($19.78/50 sheets, 5x7 cards; www.redrivercatalog.com, 888-248-8774). Also try handmade, pop-up mountain scene cards made of Daphne Bark paper from Nepal ($17/6 cards; www.taraluna.com, 877-325-9129) or a fair-trade, gilded holiday card set from Global Exchange ($20/12 cards with envelopes, store.gxonlinestore.org, 800-505-4410).

Wrapping
Large sheets of handmade, tree-free paper make perfect alternative gift wrap, and are available in woven grass, lokta, tree bark, banana fiber, spun silk, recycled office paper and recycled rag. Lokta paper is made from the inner bark of the lokta bush, a quickly regenerating plant that grows in Nepal, while banana paper is created from the waste bark of Thai banana trees ($2-$5/22 x 30-in. sheet; www.papermojo.com, 800-420-3818).

Keep packages secure with tape that's free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which releases carcinogenic dioxins when produced; or with clear cellulose tape ($.85) and recycled, gummed paper tape ($1.35; www.greenearthofficesupply.com, 800-327-8449).